The Dangerous Mr. Ryder

by Louise Allen

  ‘Did he?’ Eva took a macaroon and ate it rather desperately. Sugar was supposed to be good for shock, was it not?

  ‘I like him a lot,’ Freddie said again. ‘And I think he likes me. And I thought perhaps, when I saw him looking at you, that he likes you, too. And now he has gone away.’ He scuffed a toe in the Aubusson carpet. ‘He’s just the sort of person a chap would like for a friend, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes. He would be a very good friend,’ Eva agreed, filling up her son’s teacup. Jack appeared to have handled breaking the news of all this to Freddie much better than she would have. She was angry with him, of course she was…but it was all part of the role he had assumed when he undertook to bring her back to England. Do as I say, when I say it. When Jack was with her, she knew he would look after her. Totally.

  She would have resisted him telling Freddie about the danger, but her son was so much more grown up and perceptive than she had realised. He would have spotted the new bodyguard for what he was, and, in the absence of information, would have worried. Jack had involved him in the adventure, treated him like an intelligent young man so it became understandable and exciting. What a wonderful father he would make for Freddie.

  ‘Mama! You are spilling your tea.’

  ‘So I am.’ Eva put down her cup, and dabbed at her skirt. A father for Freddie. I am thinking of marrying him, she realised. And that’s impossible, of course, Dowager Grand Duchesses do not marry King’s Messengers. Only he’s a duke’s son…

  ‘What are you thinking about, Mama?’

  ‘I am having a very silly daydream about something that cannot possibly happen,’ Eva said briskly. ‘Now, let’s go and sit down, kick off our shoes, and we can talk until we are hoarse.’

  It took three days before the invitations began to arrive. Three days during which Eva and Freddie did indeed talk themselves hoarse, she shopped exhaustively for a new wardrobe and they explored the house until it became like a second home and the staff familiar faces.

  It was not just Grimstone who was a bodyguard, she soon realised. The pair of large footmen were never far from the door of any room she and her son were in. They stuck to her like burrs whenever she went outside the house, politely refusing to wait in the carriage whenever she entered a shop. Eventually she tackled the butler. ‘We are here and safe, Grimstone. Surely there is no risk now? Prince A…The source of danger may not even be alive.’

  ‘But his agents will be, ma’am,’ the butler pointed out in his gravelly voice. ‘This has just come for you from the guv’nor, ma’am.’

  ‘Mr Ryder?’ Eva snatched the letter off the silver salver before she could school herself into an appearance of indifference. She broke the seal and read the three lines it contained. The handwriting was black, sprawling, undisciplined, a complete contrast to Jack’s methods of operation. Or was this Lord Sebastian writing? she wondered.

  The absent troops returned home with the body of A. It has a bullet wound in the back. From very close range. P. improves daily. Show this to Grimstone and assume A.’s agents are still at large and may not yet know of his death. It was signed with a J., a slashing flourish across the bottom of the page.

  Wordlessly Eva handed the letter to the butler, who read it through with pursed lips, then gave it back. ‘Own men shot him by all accounts,’ he commented. ‘Didn’t like being made traitors of, especially in view of what happened. P. will be the Regent, ma’am?’

  ‘Yes, my brother-in-law, Prince Philippe.’ Eva folded the paper and slipped it into her reticule. It was the only thing of Jack’s she had. ‘I will go and tell Master Freddie the good news.’

  Master Freddie, as the entire staff called him, was in his favourite place, the kitchen, charming sweetmeats out of Cook. Eva tried to imagine him back in the castle. It was not hard—within the week he would have even the tyrant of the kitchens his devoted servant, the footmen would all be polishing armour for him to play with and he would no doubt be attempting to introduce cricket to the bemused inhabitants.

  ‘Freddie, good news from Maubourg. Uncle Philippe is on the mend.’

  ‘Can we go back soon, then?’ He scrambled off the table, eyes wide, mouth ringed with raspberry jam.

  ‘As soon as the Foreign Office tells me it is safe to travel. Shall we go and write to Uncle?’

  She followed that letter up with one to the Foreign Office, asking about travel and received, not a response on that subject, but the first, and most imposing, of a flood of invitations. The Prince Regent, Freddie’s godfather, begged the honour of her company at a reception in her honour at Carlton House in two days’ time.

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ she lamented to Fettersham. ‘I suppose that means feathers?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ The dresser was agog with the thought of court dress. ‘Hoops are no longer worn, though,’ she added with a tinge of disappointment. ‘The full-dress ensemble you ordered yesterday will be most appropriate.’

  ‘Well, thank goodness for that. It is difficult enough walking about with those wretched feathers in one’s coiffure without worrying about hoops flattening every small table in sight every time one moves!’

  The gown arrived from the modiste on the morning of the reception along with the hastily purchased set of ostrich plumes. ‘My goodness, waistlines are up,’ Eva complained as Fettersham fastened the gown. ‘There is very little room for my bosom in this!’

  ‘I think that’s the point, ma’am,’ the dresser observed, tweaking the narrow shoulders so they sat securely. ‘It’s a very good thing you have such excellent shoulders, ma’am, otherwise I don’t know how this style is expected to stay decent.’

  They regarded the effect in the long mirror. The gown, in palest almond green, fell from under Eva’s bosom to exactly the ankle bone. She was not convinced about the decency of showing so much ankle, either, although she was prepared to admit the fuller skirts were charming. The hem was banded with satin ribbon, of exactly the same shade, the texture making it show up subtly against the silk, and the whole lower half of the skirt was heavily embroidered in wreaths of flowers. The pattern was repeated on the puffed sleeves and the deep vee of the neckline was dressed in lace, which went some way to preserving the decencies.

  ‘Very striking, ma’am,’ Fettersham pronounced.

  ‘Very dashing,’ Eva amended. ‘I do not recall it seeming so at the fitting!’

  Long kid gloves with lace at the top to match the bodice, simple slippers, a gauze scarf at the elbows and the nodding weight of the feathers completed the ensemble. It was certainly striking enough for the occasion, Eva decided, wondering wistfully what Jack would make of it. She was managing very well, she congratulated herself. She thought of him only a dozen times an hour during the day. It was the nights that were so hard, when all she could do was toss and turn, aching for the sound of his voice, the caress of his hands, the heat of his mouth.

  Fettersham produced the diamond eardrops, necklace and cuffs borrowed from Rundell and Bridges, the jewellers who had proved only too willing to oblige the Grand Duchess, in return for her tacit agreement to them making as much capital out of the fact as they wished.

  ‘Mama?’ It was Freddie, knocking at the door. ‘May I see?’

  ‘Wow!’ he said as the dresser let him in. ‘How do you dance in those feathers, Mama?’

  ‘I do not have to,’ she explained, stooping to kiss him. She was loving rediscovering her son, getting to know him again, not as the little boy she had left, but this new, much more independent and lively nine-year-old. ‘Now, you will be good and go to bed when Hoffmeister tells you?’

  ‘Yes, Mama.’ She gave him high marks for refraining from rolling his eyes. The arrival of his private secretary-cum-tutor from the Eton lodgings had restarted the rivalry between the German and the butler. Freddie played one off against the other with what Eva tried to tell herself was precocious statesmanship, but she had to uphold Hoffmeister’s authority when it came to bedtime and study periods.

  Carlton
House was just as she had seen in pictures, and even more stiflingly hot, crowded and elaborately ornate than she could ever have imagined. The Regent was gracious, over-familiar to the point of discomfort and determined she would enjoy herself. He insisted on escorting Eva around the crowded reception rooms, introducing her to one person after another until her head spun. She searched the rooms as they went, but there were no tall, elegant, dangerous men with grey eyes and a wicked smile.

  ‘I am quite out of practice with this sort of thing,’ she confessed to Lord Alveney. ‘My brother-in-law Prince Philippe has been unwell for several months, so our court has been extremely quiet. Please, sir…’ she turned and smiled prettily at the Regent ‘…I beg you not to neglect your other guests for me, I have so much enjoyed seeing these wonderful rooms in your company, but I can see I will be very unpopular if I monopolise you.’

  The Regent beamed, blustered a little, then took himself off with a pat on her arm and a promise to show her the Conservatory later.

  ‘Nicely done, ma’am,’ Alveney said with a lazy smile. Eva was spared from replying to this sally by the arrival of a tall young woman who bumped into her and knocked her feathers all askew.

  ‘Oh, my goodness!’ I am so sorry! And you are the Grand Duchess and I haven’t even been presented to you and I do this! Oh, dear! Oh, look, there is a retiring room, please, your Serene Highness, if we just go in there I am sure they can be pinned back…’

  Eva sent Alveney an apologetic smile and allowed herself to be swept off into the retiring room, which was empty save for a maidservant with a sewing basket, smelling salts and a bottle of cordial. Every eventuality covered. Eva was thinking with amusement when the young woman snapped, ‘Out, now,’ to the maid. The key turned in the lock and the stranger was standing with her back to the door, eyeing Eva with angry grey eyes.

  Antoine’s agent? Here, in the Regent’s own house? Eva edged towards the dressing table, hoping to find scissors or a long nail file. ‘What do you want?’ She spoke calmly, as though to someone mentally disturbed. The words she had spoken the last time she had been in this predicament—So, you have not come to kill me?—did not seem appropriate now. This young woman looked as if she intended to do just that, for all her lack of an obvious weapon, and asking the question seemed likely to inflame her further.

  But even if her defiant words to Jack when he had appeared like magic in her room were not the ones to use now, she could not help but feel a strong sense of déjà vu. Why? Because she was cornered and in fear for her life? Or because…

  Eva stared at the other woman. She was like a feminine, younger version of Jack. The tall, elegant figure, the dark hair, the clear, intelligent grey eyes with their flecks of black. She found her voice.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want to know what you are doing to my brother—and I want you to stop it. Now.’

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘Your brother? You are Jack’s sister?’

  ‘Sebastian.’ The flurried and apologetic young woman was gone, replaced by a determined, poised and angry one.

  ‘I know him as Jack.’

  ‘Oh, it is the same thing! I don’t care how you—’

  ‘It is not the same thing,’ Eva said firmly. ‘And I am doing nothing to your brother, and have done nothing to justify your behaviour now.’

  ‘You have broken his heart,’ the other retorted.

  ‘Nonsense! Why, that is complete nonsense. Your brother left my house without a word to me a week ago. There had been no disagreement, I had not dismissed him. Broken heart, indeed, what melodrama. If Jack Ryder has anything to say to me, he knows where I am.’ Broken heart? I know whose heart is broken—but I did not leave him.

  ‘You were lovers.’ It was a flat statement. ‘No, do not bother to deny it. He has said nothing about you, all I knew was that he had been in France, on a mission. Then when he came to see me, he had changed—something inside was hurt.’

  Eva discovered that her head was beginning to ache, and so were her feet in their new slippers. ‘Oh, sit down, please, for goodness’ sake. What is your name?’

  ‘Belinda. Lady Belinda Cambourn. I am a widow.’ Eva nodded—Jack had mentioned Bel. ‘I shouldn’t be here, am still in mourning. But I love my brother very much, and I know him very well. And he is hurting. Deeply.’

  ‘But—’

  Bel waved a hand, silencing her. ‘No one else would be able to tell, except possibly you.’ She shot Eva a look of positive dislike. ‘When he is on missions—when he is Jack—he is cool and calm and quiet, but there is still that wicked enjoyment of life behind those eyes of his. When he is Sebastian, he is the warmest, kindest brother you can imagine.’ Bel directed another withering look at Eva. ‘But now something has gone—the laughter has gone, the warmth inside has gone. He came to see me; he was very sweet, just as he always is. I asked him what was wrong and he laughed and said nothing, just a tiring mission in France.’

  ‘There you are, then,’ Eva said briskly.

  ‘So I asked Henry,’ Bel pushed on, as though she had not spoken. ‘And he said that the guv’nor had got himself entangled with you. He said the pair of you were smelling like April and May and—’ She saw Eva’s blank expression. ‘Like lovers, like people in love,’ she supplied irritably. ‘And he had warned Jack that no good would come of it.’

  ‘If your brother does not choose to tell you about his personal life, I am certainly not going to.’ Like April and May…like people in love. She loved him. But Jack…Surely if he loved her he would never leave her like that?

  ‘Don’t you care about him? Henry says he saved your life.’

  ‘Yes. He did.’ Suddenly it was too much, she had to speak of him, about him, and this angry young woman with Jack’s eyes at least cared enough about him to virtually kidnap her in the middle of a Carlton House reception.

  ‘And, yes, we were lovers. And I have never had one before, in case you think I sleep with every good-looking man who comes my way,’ she added militantly. ‘And I had to ask him, because he was being so damnably gallant and gentlemanlike. We knew it could only last while we were in France—I cannot risk the scandal. We both knew that.’

  Bel was watching her in wide-eyed silence now. At least she had stopped glaring. ‘I fell in love with him. I didn’t mean to, I really did not mean to. But I couldn’t help it. I love him so much.’

  ‘Then—?’ Bel was thinking hard, her brow furrowed. ‘Of course, you thought he was just a King’s Messenger, a glorified bodyguard. No wonder you dismissed him when you got to England.’

  ‘I knew he was more than that. And in Brussels I found him in the Peerage. But what difference does that make? I’d love him if he was a fishmonger’s son. I told you—I did not dismiss him, he left me. He does not want me, or he would never have gone like that, without a word, just with a message to my son.’

  Bel was biting her lip thoughtfully. ‘Was it worth it?’ she blurted out. ‘Was having him as a lover worth all this heartache?’

  ‘Yes! Yes,’ Eva added more softly. ‘But he never pretended it was anything more than an affaire.’

  ‘He never said it was anything more, you mean,’ Bel retorted. ‘Did you tell him you love him?’

  ‘No, of course not. Can you imagine telling a man you love him when you know he does not love you? How humiliating to see the pity in his face, the tact he will have to use to extricate himself.’

  ‘Not if he loves you, too—how can you be sure he doesn’t? I do not know about love, I was not in love with my husband and I have taken no lover. But I know my brother, and he is hurting. He is missing you.’

  ‘Then why did he leave me like that?’ Eva demanded. ‘That hurt me.’

  ‘I expect he thought a clean break was kindest for you. I imagine it must have been difficult to talk intimately in a houseful of servants and with your son there,’ Bel said thoughtfully. ‘Do you want to marry him?’

  ‘Yes.’ The word was out of her mouth
before she could think. Yes, of course she did.

  ‘And he can hardly ask the Dowager Grand Duchess, can he? I don’t expect it is etiquette. You will have to tell him you love him and ask.’

  ‘But…what if he says no?’ Eva shut her eyes at the thought of it, every cell in her body cringing. She could almost hear that cool, deep voice, carefully and kindly masking his amusement at such a preposterous idea.

  ‘What if he says yes?’ Bel countered. ‘You’ll never know until you try, because, believe me, Sebastian is far too proud to plead with a woman who has been making it clear she wants no entanglements. And you have, haven’t you?’

  ‘Of course! I would never have got him to agree if he had thought I was going to fall in love with him. What are you smiling about?’ she added indignantly. Bel’s mouth was curving into an unmistakable grin.

  ‘The thought of my rake of a brother having to be asked if he wanted to make love to a beautiful woman,’ she explained frankly.

  ‘Is he a rake, then?’ He had said as much, but somehow she had let herself think about gaming and clothes and racehorses, not mistresses and lightskirts.

  ‘Shocking,’ his loving sister confirmed. ‘But somehow I doubt if he is seeking solace elsewhere this time.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And, ma’am…’

  ‘Eva. Please call me Eva.’ Somehow this stranger had become someone she wanted for a friend.

  ‘Eva. There is something Sebastian would never tell you, but if I am going to trust you with one of my brothers, I may as well trust you with both. Our half-brother—’